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By Sara Toth Stub

On a recent Sunday morning, Adeeb Jawad Joudeh Al Husseini was sitting on a bench just inside the sole public entrance to Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The doorway to the sprawling church, founded in the 4th Century, is where the 53-year-old Muslim has spent much of his life. His father, grandfather and dozens of generations of forefathers before them also dedicated most of their lives to sitting on this bench, guarding the church believed to contain the tomb of Jesus, Al Husseini said, pulling a 20cm-long iron key out of his leather jacket’s inner pocket.

This key is the only one that can unlock the church’s imposing wooden doors, a duty that was, according to Al Husseini, given to his family by Saladin, the sultan who captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 – just one of many times that control of Jerusalem, coveted for its holiness by Jews, Christians and Muslims, has switched hands. Saladin wanted to make sure that the church was not harmed by his fellow Muslims, something that happened in 1009 when the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim ordered a number of churches in the Holy Land be burned, including the Holy Sepulchre. (Al-Hakim’s son approved the rebuilding of the church in 1128.)

“So Saladin gave our family the key to protect the church,” Al Husseini said. “For our family, this is an honour. And it’s not an honour just for our family, but it’s an honour for all Muslims in the world.”

Members of Al Husseini’s family, along with another Muslim family, the Nuseibehs, have become permanent fixtures in the complicated fabric of the Holy Sepulchre church. The complex is now used by six different ancient churches – Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox – each of which has monks living there. Throughout history, relations have been fraught between the religious communities in this complex, sometimes leading to violence over which church controls which parts of the building. To this day, a 19th-century Ottoman decree attempts to keep these tensions in check by declaring that each church is limited to using the spaces in the building that they controlled back in 1853 when the decree was issued.

Every morning when the church’s doors open at 4 am, members of the two families – or a representative appointed by them – is present for what has emerged as a ceremonial act of cooperation. The Muslim representative unlocks the latch and pushes open one door, then a clergyman from the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox or Armenian Orthodox church – who take turns on a rotating basis – pull open the other door from inside, while clergy from the other denominations supervise. The same happens in reverse when the church closes at 7 pm.

The tourists and pilgrims who come here to kiss the stone slab revered to be the place where the body of Jesus was washed before burial, and enter the underground chamber believed to contain his tomb, all walk past these Muslim guardians, who sit on the bench much of the day in between tending to family and business. Historians cannot determine how long the role of these doorkeepers goes back, but they also haven’t made serious attempts to disprove the legacy – and most consider it central to the daily operations of the church.

“It’s basically like a lot of things in the church; it’s a tradition,” said Raymond Cohen, professor emeritus of international relations at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has studied the church and written the book, Saving the Holy Sepulchre. “And I think it’s one of the gems of Jerusalem, really.”

While Al Husseini’s family holds the key, the Nuseibeh family is charged with the physical work of opening and closing the church’s door, a duty they trace back to 637 when the caliph Omar first brought Islam to Jerusalem, explained Wajeeh Y Nuseibeh, 67, who was sitting on the bench next to Al Huseini.

“Our family first arrived to Jerusalem with Omar,” and since then has been entrusted to protect the church from vandals, Nuseibeh said, handing me his business card, which declares he is “Custodian and door-keeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre”.

But Al Husseini insists that Nuseibeh’s family only entered the set-up later.

“This is not true what [Nuseibeh] says,” Al Husseini told me later, adding that shortly after his family received the keys from Saladin in 1187, they asked the Nuseibeh family to open and close the door, which involves climbing a ladder to reach the lock, while Al Husseini’s family remained the holder of the key.

“It was not honourable for our family to be climbing up and down ladders, because we were sheiks,” Al Husseini said.

Al Husseini’s card says he is “Keys Custodian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.”

Nuseibeh smiled at Al Husseini’s version of the story, then repeated his own version, going back to Omar, who ruled the city more than 500 years before Saladin. Sitting side by side, they told me that the matter is a friendly debate and something they often laugh about, an account confirmed by a mutual friend, Ibrahim Attieh, 75, a retired tour guide who joined them on the bench to chat.

“Yes, they are friends, and I am a friend of both of them,” said Attieh, who was one of the many friends, priests, tourists and even Israeli police officers (who oversee security in the church) to join Al Husseini and Nuseibeh on their bench during the day.

In addition to surviving the whims of Jerusalem’s governing powers, including hundreds of years when the caliphate charged pilgrims large sums of money to enter, the church has also been torn by inner conflict. Throughout history there have been clashes – sometimes violent – between various denominations over control of certain areas of the church, and the local powers, especially during Ottoman times, were often involved in redistributing rights and territories inside the building.

Occasionally, these disagreements even threatened to spark conflict between world powers. In 1853, Russia threatened to invade Turkey if its Ottoman government, which also controlled Jerusalem, granted France’s request to give part of the Greek Orthodox area of the church to the Roman Catholics. This caused the Ottoman sultan Abdulmecid I to issue the decree saying that there would be no more transferring of property and rights inside the church.

Today, this so-called status quo that was imposed on the denominations still governs every facet of life in the church, from the scheduled times of services, to the languages of the Masses, to the route a procession takes. Any change to the routine risks discord and violence, last demonstrated in 2008 when a brawl broke out between Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox clergy over the route of a procession, leading to arrests. The delicate nature of keeping the status quo means that renovations and repairs are rare, Cohen explained.

“It’s no simple task to keep the peace,” he said.

But after decades of negotiations, Roman Catholic, Armenian and Greek Orthodox leaders recently came to a historic agreement to repair the structure covering what they believe is Jesus’ tomb, which architects have long warned is in danger of collapse. The square structure, known as the Edicule, located under the church’s main rotunda, is now covered in scaffolding. Ladders, stone slabs, plywood and other building supplies have been scattered around the centre of the church since June 2016. This is first repair work to be done to the tomb’s chapel in more than 200 years and the first significant project for any part of the building since the edifice was restored, beginning in the 1960s.

But even though the churches may now cooperate better than in the past, and can rely on the Israeli police to keep order, the doorkeepers are an embodiment of how long-held traditions and the involvement of outsiders has determined much of the course of the Holy Sepulchre’s history.

“Things are like a wool sweater here; if you start unravelling it, the whole thing falls apart,” Cohen said.

At 6:30 pm on Sunday evening, half an hour before the church’s scheduled closing, a loud clanging pierced the quiet in the church. This was the sound of Omar Sumren performing the ritual banging of the knocker, then shutting one of the double doors in preparation for the final closing. Sumren and his brother, Ishmael, have worked on behalf of Al Husseini for 25 years, performing the opening and closing duties when Al Husseini is busy.

Just before 7 pm as the last visitors were leaving, Ishmael picked up the ladder resting inside the church’s doors and moved it outside. Two Catholic Franciscans clad in their signature brown gowns with rope belts, along with Greek and Armenian Orthodox priests dressed in black, stood inside the threshold, observing every move. An Israeli policeman, wearing a yarmulke, or Jewish skullcap, was also present for the daily ritual. Ishmael shut the door then ascended the ladder to close the upper latch. He climbed down, folded up the ladder and passed it back to the priests inside through a small hatch in the door.

As the monks began another night inside the church compound, Omar, entrusted with the key from Al Husseini, retired to a small room just off the main courtyard in front of the church. Each night one of these men tasked with the door and key duties sleeps here, ready to perform the regimented opening in the morning.

“This for me is a second house,” Al Husseini said.

28 November 2016

By Mike Ives

HONG KONG — Members of the Rohingya ethnic group face chronic discrimination in access to medical care in Myanmar and other Asian countries, with severe consequences for health and mortality rates, a study has found.

The report, published online by the British medical journal The Lancet on Dec. 1, said the Myanmar government’s role in the situation could arguably be characterized as genocide or ethnic cleansing.

The study analyzed health care indicators in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malaysia and other countries where about 1.5 million Rohingya live. The researchers compiled data from governments, human rights groups and other sources. It found that the indicators were consistently worse for the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group, than for other populations living in the same areas.

The researchers were especially critical of the government of Myanmar, which faces international pressure to address a continuing humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State, a region on the border with Bangladesh, where advocacy groups say the authorities have killed dozens of Rohingya after an attack in October on a police border post.

“The part played by the Myanmar government in restricting Rohingya reproductive rights, and in the high morbidity and mortality of the Rohingya people, could arguably be advanced as a charge of genocide, or at the very least as ethnic cleansing,” the report said, referring to what it said was a pattern of health-related discrimination that stretched back decades.

In Maungdaw and Butheetaung townships, in the area of Rakhine State where much of the recent violence against Rohingya people has occurred, there was only one physician per 158,000 people, compared with one physician per 681 people in the Buddhist-majority area around Sittwe, the state capital, the study said, citing the government data from 2013.

Dr. Htun Tin, director of the Disaster and Public Health Emergency Response Unit at Myanmar’s Health Ministry, pushed back against the report in a telephone interview on Monday.

“We never restricted Bengalis reproductive rights,” Dr. Htun Tin said, using a term for Rohingya that is common in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Many there consider the Rohingya to be from Bangladesh, even if their families have been in Myanmar for generations.

“We are trying our best to give health care to all people in Rakhine State,” Dr. Htun Tin added.

Myanmar has denied the Rohingya citizenship under a 1982 law that excludes them from a list of 135 approved “national races.” Between 300,000 and half a million Rohingya are now believed to live in Bangladesh. The government there began its first census of undocumented Rohingya refugees in June.

The Lancet study, by researchers at Harvard University Medical School and the School of Public Health, cited examples in several countries, beginning in the late 1970s, in which the Rohingya suffered from poor access to obstetric care and a high prevalence of waterborne illnesses, among other health problems.

Stunting, or lower-than-normal height because of malnutrition, affects 60 percent of Rohingya child refugees in Bangladesh, a rate 50 percent higher than among the country’s general population, the study said, citing data from 2002 and 2012 collected by Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations. It also documented rates of diarrhea among children that were far higher for Rohingya children in Bangladesh, Malaysia and India in recent years than they were in the general populations of those countries.

Diarrhea is a leading cause of malnutrition in children under 5, according to the World Health Organization. It can also be life-threatening, especially in young people who are malnourished or who have compromised immune systems. It kills about 760,000 children under 5 each year, the agency says.

But the study paid particular attention to health problems in Rakhine State, which has more than one million Rohingya people and where about 140,000 Rohingya have been living in camps for internally displaced people around Sittwe, since a spasm of communal violence in 2012 left them homeless.

In recent weeks, human rights groups have relayed allegations of rape and arbitrary killings of Rohingya people by the authorities in northern Rakhine State, as satellite images show villages burned to the ground. Thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, and the United Nations human rights agency has said abuses against them may be crimes against humanity.

The Lancet study, citing a 2013 government report, said there was just one latrine per 37 people in the Sittwe camps on average, and that diarrheal illness affected 40 percent of Rohingya children under 5 who live in the camps — five times the rate for other children in Rakhine State.

The mortality rate for children younger than 5 in Maungdaw and Butheetaung was 135 and 224 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 77 deaths per 1,000 live births in the Sittwe area, the study added.

In a statement on Monday, Mark Cutts, the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Myanmar, said that humanitarian organizations in the country had long called for improved access to health services for Muslims and other vulnerable groups that face restrictive policies.

Although access to basic health services was historically low for both Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine State, he added, “Muslim people face a number of additional barriers in accessing health care because of movement restrictions” and inadequate emergency referral procedures.

Dr. Thaung Hlaing, the director of the Rakhine State Public Health Department’s Strategic Health Operations Center, said in a telephone interview on Monday that all of the state’s hospitals were functioning well.

But he suggested that the government should not be blamed for not providing health care in the state’s restive northern townships.

“We wouldn’t dare to go and give health services in villages where the conflict happened” because of security concerns, he said. “If villagers from that area can come to hospital, we can give full service.”

Saw Nang contributed reporting from Mandalay, Myanmar.

5 December 2016

By Charles F. Moreira

The Republic of Cuba submitted a resolution entitled “Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Blockade Imposed by the United States of America Against Cuba” before the United Nations General Assembly on 26 th of October, 2016.

This is the 25 th consecutive time Cuba has submitted such resolution before the U.N. General Assembly and most often, the vast majority of U.N. General Assembly member countries, including Malaysia have voted in support of the resolutions, with the only exceptions being the United States of America and Israel voting against.

When Cuba submitted a similar resolution last year it was supported by 191 member countries, with only the United States and Israel against.

However, news agency Reuters reports that the United States for the very first time abstained in its vote on 26 October 2016 and so did Israel.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- cuba-un- idUSKCN12Q259

Whilst U.N. General Assembly resolutions are non-binding, hopefully, this should be an encouraging development in the process of normalisation of U.S. – Cuba relations, since the United States imposed this embargo against Cuba on 19 th October 1960, two years after the victory of the Cuban Revolution which deposed the dictatorial, pro-U.S. Batista regime and nationalised U.S.- owned oil refineries, which is Cuba’s right as a sovereign nation.

This comes after the United States and Cuba restored diplomatic relations on 20 July 2015 and after U.S. President Barack Obama’s official visit to Cuba where on 22 nd March 2016 Obama acknowledged that this embargo is obsolete, harms rather than helps the Cuban people and called upon the U.S. Congress to end this embargo.

No real change yet

However, despite all that rhetoric, this economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba continues with continued debilitating effects to Cuba’ s economy, despite several minor amendments to regulations related to this embargo in 2015 and 2016.

Also, despite what he said in his speech in Cuba, on 11 th of September 2015, President Obama again renewed sanctions against Cuba under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, which constitutes the laws and regulations that make up the embargo, alleging foreign policy interests.

At a media presentation on the 25 th of September 2016, Her Excellency Ibete Fernandez Hernandez, Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba to Malaysia said that the U.S. continues to ban exports to Cuba of products and equipment important to key sectors of the Cuban economy, whilst at the same time, the continuation of the embargo prevents Cuba from freely exporting her products and services to the U.S. and cannot have direct banking relations with the U.S. Also, except of U.S. investments in Cuba’s telecommunications sector, Cuba cannot receive U.S. investments in other sectors of her economy.

Cuban Ambassador Ibete briefs Malaysian journalists on Cuba’s U.N. resolution and on the embago on 2016-09- 27

Also, Cuba is banned from opening corresponding accounts in U.S. banks and has been unable to make either cash deposits or payments in U.S. dollars in third countries and this hampers trade, since most international payments for goods and services are denominated in U.S. dollars.

Up until the conclusion of the writing of the resolution which was submitted to the U.N. General Assembly, the United States' announced authorisation of Cuba’s use of U.S. dollars in international transactions has not materialised, nor the possibility for U.S. banks to provide loans to Cuban
importers of authorised U.S. products. Furthermore, finnacial institutions and U.S. suppliers of such products continue to fear being fined for having transactions with Cuba.

Stiff penalties

Worse still, the risk of heavy fines by the U.S. has deterred many non-U.S. banks opening accounts for Cuban companies and handling trade-related financial transactions with Cuba, even in non-U.S. currencies.

The list is long, so only some examples of penalties, blocked or refused transactions since 17 th December 2014 are listed below:-

On 6 August 2016, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) levied a fine of U.S.$ 271,815 on U.S. maritime insurance company – Navigators Insurance Company for violating the embargo by paying U.S.$21,736 in interest for a Cuban national.

On 18 and 23 September 2015, an Australian bank refused to make two transfers in Australian dollars to the Cubatur travel agency for for payment of services for a group of 19 travelling to Cuba.

In November 2015, the U.S.-based PayPal online financial payments company blocked the account of German company Proticket, used by its customers to pay for tickets for the musical comedy Soy Cubano and a concert by Cuban singer Addys Mercedes on grounds that it violated the U.S. embargo. Proticket sued PayPal and on 19 April 2016 a court in Dormund, Germany ruled against PayPal, forcing it to unblock Proticket’s account, failing which PayPal had to pay Proticket 250,000 euros compensation.

On 12 February 2016 a branch of Standard Chartered Bank in Uganda informed Cuban doctors working at Mbarara University that they had until 15 th February to withdraw their money from their accounts with the bank, since as Cubans theye were not allowed to have accounts with the bank. The doctors tried to open an account with the British Barclays Bank but after doing so were informed that they could not make transactions to or from Cuba.

On 18 March 2016, it became known that Japanese bank Mitsui Sumitomo SMBC Trust refused a funds transfer by a Japanese citizen to pay for a tourist card fom the Cuban consulate in Japan.

On 3 May 2016, it became known that funds collected by the Asociacion de Cubanos in the United Kingdom had been retained by the bank of U.S. company Eventbrite because it had sold tickets for a classic music concert organised by the Association whose funds would go towards the purchase and donation of a piano for the Amadeo Roldan Music Conservatory in Cuba.

Cuba is developing her petroleum industry and on 25 February 2016, OFAC fined CGG Services S. A. of France U.S.$614,250 for having supplied spare parts and equipment originating from the U.S. for gas and oil exploration to ships operating in Cuban territorial waters. Furthermore, the Venezuelan subsidiary of CGG Services S.A. had carried out five transactions related the processing of information for seismic research conducted by a Cuban entity in Cuba’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

Free medical care for all

As a socialist country, Cuba provides free medical care for all her citizens and this care is said to be the best in Latin America and Cuba is also noted for her internationally respected biotechnology and biomedical industries.

As a result of this embargo, Cuba’s public health services have been unable to obtain from the U.S. the required medicines, reagents, spar parts for diagnostic and treatment equipment, medical instruments and supplies necessary for these services to function.

For example in February 2016, the U.S. company General Electric would not sell medical equipment for the study of the peripheral nervous system to Cuba, citing the embargo

Also, the Farmacuba company requested four U.S. suppliers of protection means and chemical and biotechnological products to manufacture medicines in Cuba and amongst the four, the multi- national company Sigma-Andrich refused to entertain the request due to complications arising from this embargo.

This has forced Cuba to source these through intermediaries from further afield which results in higher costs.

Altogether, this since 1960, this embargo has cost Cuba’s public health services over U.S.$2.6 billion and over U.S.$82.7 million over the 2014 – 2015 period, an increase of about U.S.$5 million over the 2013 – 2014 period.

Poaching talent as a weapon

Besides these high costs, since 2006, the United States has been waging an aggressive campaign through the “Parole for Cuban Medical Professionals” programme aimed at inciting Cuban medical professionals working at an international mission outside Cuba to defect. Not only does resulted in a brain drain which adversely affects Cuba’s medical services but also denies patients in these thir countries from benefiting from their services, and this still goes on despite supposedly improved bi-lateral relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

Biotechnology

In biotechnology, the National Products Centre which comes under the National Centre for Scientific Research was unable to two chromatographs by U.S. company Agilent used for quality control of products being researched and developed at the Centre.

AICA Laboratories Enterprise faced difficulties obtaining spar parts and technical assistance to repair a machine from Bosch Pharmaceuticals Company in the U.S. used fo rthe production of carpules – i.e. injectable vials with an open bottom used in odontology (dentistry and craniofacial research) or for insulin doses. This has had financial repercussions worth close to U.S.$1.76 million.

Impact on food, education and national culture

Repercussion so fthis embargo has cost Cuba’s food production sector U.S.$605.7 million in the 2014 – 2015 period due to increase price of seeds, fertiliser, spare parts for agricultural equipment and other consumables due to Cuba having to acquire these items through intermediaries in third countries. In some cases, the longer lead times between order placed and fulfilment has resulted in substantial repercussions on Cuba’s food production.

Free education is a right of Cuba’s citizens and with not being able to acquire essential educational equipment from the U.S., Cuba has had to sources these from further afield, resulting in losses for Cuba’s Minsitry of Education of close to U.S.$ 1.25 million in 2014 – 2015.

The difficulty in obtaining the required equipment for professional sports has adversely impacted Cuba’s sports sector and the embargo has cost Cuba’s culture sector close to U.S.$29.5 million in the 2014 – 2015 period.

A major aspect of the embargo which seriously affects Cuba’s foreign trade is the prohibition of ships from docking at U.S. ports within 180 days of having docked at a Cuban port.

This has been a major deterrent to ships docking in Cuba to deliver or take on cargo, since it is not cost effective for a to carry only one set of cargo types for Cuba, since they will also carry cargo for other destinations in the region, including the United States.

This forces Cuba to resort on trans-shipment through neighbouring countries, which introduces delays and adds to cost.

Since 1960, the embargo has cost Cuba the equivalent of close to U.S.$125.9 trillion and between March 2015 and March 2016, it has cost Cuba U.S.$4.68 million.

Opposition to the embargo

A hopeful sign for Cuba is growing pressure from U.S. corporations, industry associations, chambers of commerce, businessmen of Cuban origin in the United States, respective state governments, groups of legislators, religious leaders, non-governmental bodies, Republican and Democrat politicians and others, for the U.S. to end its embargo against Cuba.

According to polls of U.S. society conducted by CBS News, AP-GfK, the PEW Research Centre, the Engage Cuba lobbying group, the Atlantic Council think-tank and others, on average 70% of U.S. citizens support the lifting of the embargo against Cuba, with the majority of Democrats supporting President Obama’s policy towards Cuba.

Whilst the ending of this embargo and its associated legislation such as the Torricelli Act, the Helms-Burton Act, the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 which prevents U.S. citizens from travelling to Cuba as tourists and the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 which the financing for sales of U.S. agricultural products to Cuba and these can only be repealed by Congress.

Whilst the U.S. President cannot repeal these acts, he however has the executive power to modify the implementation of aspects of the embargo against Cuba, to allow Cuban banks, companies and so forth to open accounts with U.S. banks; end the financial persecution of Cuba; authorise exports of U.S. products to Cuban companies; permit the import into the U.S. of Cuban products and services such as tobacco, rum, biotechnology products, as well as products manufactured in third countries which contain raw materials from Cuba such as nickle or sugar; authorise U.S. companies to invest in Cuba; authorise U.S. citizens to to receive medical treatment in Cuba and end the 180 days prohibition of ships which have docked in Cuba from docking in the U.S.

However, despite the promises to mitigate the effects of the embargo in his speeches, President Obama has done very little in this regard and Cuba believes that he can do more.

However, with Obama coming close to the end of his two terms as President very soon, Ambassador Ibete believes that if Hillary Clinton is elected the next President, she will continue with Obama’s legacy, though quite probably at a slower pace.

On the other hand, Ambassador Ibete is less certain of Donald Trump’s policy towards Cuba should he be elected as president, since during his election campaigning, Trump’s has flip-flopped between saying that he will reconcile relations with Cuba and at other times saying that he break relations.

In a post on Twitter dated 28 November 2016, President-elect Donald Trump wrote, “If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate the deal.

During his election campaign, Trump said he planned to reverse Obama’s executive orders on Cuba. These include allowing direct flights between the two countries and lifting limits on the amount of cigars and rum that American travelers can bring back to the U.S. for personal consumption, unless the Cuban government grants more political freedom to Cuba’s people, including allowing them religious and political freedom and the freeing of political prisoners.

As President, Trump could order the State Department to place Cuba back on the list of “state sponsors of terrorism” and break off diplomatic relations with Cuba but such measures could well come against objections from industries which have already begun to take advantage of the business and trade opportunities with Cuba, such as the restoration of direct flights between the US and Cuba.

According to John Kavulich, the president of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, the Trump administration could well face opposition, including lawsuits from the airline industry if Trump were to do what he threatens, since airlines have already made substantial financial investments based upon the new regulations from the Obama administration.

For instance, American Airlines and JetBlue have already begun flights between the U.S. and Cuba, so stand to lose such business.

Also, tour and travel companies such as Airbnb, Carnival Cruise Line, and Starwood Hotels have also begun to expand into Cuba, hoping to take advantage of what promises to eventually become a booming new tourist destination. Trump could also come up against objections to such reversal from fellow Republicans in the Congress.

So it’s left to be seen if a President Trump will actually implement such measures which would amount to bullying and a continuation of American hegemonic attempts to undermine Cuba sovereignty and interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs.

However, if Trump indeed carries out its threats, Cuba will continue to have the support of the freedom and peace loving people and countries of the world, who have helped Cuba to survive the difficulties imposed upon her during the 50 or so years of this cruel and unjust embargo, whilst U.S. imperialism and hegemony will continue to be condemned.

A legacy of the Cold War

The embargo against Cuba is a legacy of the Cold War and unlike heavily armed Russia, China and North Korea today, as well as the various terrorist groups, Cuba in no way threatens the existence of the United States.

It’s known that the continuation of this embargo is very much influenced by pressure from Cubans loyal to the deposed dictator Batista who fled Cuba to the U.S. and they constitute a considerable electoral vote base which U.S. politicians feel they must please, however it is also known that more amongst the descendants of these exiles favour ending the embargo and reconcilliation between the U.S. and Cuba.

So what does the U.S. have to fear from normalising relations with Cuba, unless it fears that with Cuba’s determination to continue along its socialist path and its fierce sense of national independence and sovereignty; if the embargo is lifted, one wonders wther the U.S. fears that Cuba’s resultant progress and prosperity will serve as an inspiration to other Latin American countries resulting in the U.S. losing its geo-strategic dominance of the people’s of this sub- continent south of the United States, many of whom would like to get the Yanquis of their backs.

Malaysia maintains close relations with Cuba and many Malaysian students have studied or are studying in Cuba.

Charles F. Moreira is a JUST member.

30 November 2016

By Dr Gideon Polya

Vale Fidel Castro (1926-2016). Despite decades of illegal US sanctions, and an average per capita GDP of only circa $7,000 as compared to $56,000 for the US, Cuba has good primary health care, 100% literacy, a Western life expectancy, and an under-5 infant mortality of 6 deaths per 1,000 live births, the same as for the US. True democracy fundamentally means expression of the will of the people and in Castro’s one-party Cuba that has meant  ecosocialism and the survival of infants for a decent, healthy, literate, educated and long life.

Fidel Castro’s socialist Cuba has been a model for civilized development in the Third World that respects the fundamental human right, the right to life, and is in ideological opposition to ecologically unsustainable, greed-driven, neoliberal globalization that disproportionately rewards the One Percenters at the expense of Humanity and the Biosphere.  The achievements of  Fidel Castro’s socialist Cuba are outlined below:

1. Fidel Castro and socialist Cuba survived criminal US hostility, terrorism, invasion and economic blockade.

Fidel Castro and his fellow socialist revolutionaries overthrew the US-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959. Fidel Castro (Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz) subsequently governed the Republic of Cuba for 47 years as Prime Minister (1959 to 1976)  and thence as President (1976 to 2006) [1, 2].  The US emplaced an illegal economic blockade against Cuba in 1961 that still persists despite a recent partial diplomatic rapprochement by US President Barack Obama that extreme right-wing US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to reverse. The US embargo prevents exports to Cuba except for food and medicine under threat of up to 10 years’ imprisonment.  Since 1992 the UN General Assembly has passed a resolution every year condemning the embargo as violating the Charter of the United Nations and international law. Thus, for example,  in 2014 out of the 193 nations of the UN General Assembly,  188 countries voted to condemn the US embargo, with   the US and Apartheid Israel voting against and the US lackey Pacific island micro- nations Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstaining. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have condemned the US embargo [3]. The US under President John Kennedy responded militarily to Castro’s Cuba with the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. When Castro permitted Soviet nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, US President John Kennedy brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation and the missiles were withdrawn [1, 2] . The CIA and  CIA-backed Cuban exiles unsuccessfully mounted about 600 criminal plots to assassinate Fidel Castro [4, 5].  Cuba backed revolutionary movements in Africa and Latin America to which the US responded with war criminal invasions, the backing of extreme  right-wing dictatorships, and the training and funding of death squads, with Fidel Castro’s fellow revolutionary   Che Guevara being a notable victim [2, 6, 7].

2. US and Cuban human rights and incarceration in context.

From a human rights perspective, a one-party, Communist Cuba can be legitimately criticized for one-party rule, suppression of dissent and imprisonment of dissidents. However those actions by the Castro regime must necessarily be seen in the context of the sustained economic embargo, violent hostility, state terrorism, non-state terrorism and endless subversion in relation to Cuba by an exceptionalist, serial invader  and serial war criminal US “rogue state” that regards itself as above international law and  indeed dominates and subverts the whole world (2, 6, 7).  In terms of incarceration rate measured as “prisoners per 100,000 people”  the US is a world leader with 693  as compared to Cuba’s 510, Iceland’s 45  and US-backed Apartheid Israel’s 265 (37,300 if one includes all Occupied Palestinians and 15,900 if one simply considers the 2 million Palestinians imprisoned in the Gaza Concentration Camp) [8, 9]. The US has 4% of the world’s  population but has 25% of the world’s circa 10 million prisoners [10]. Millions of Americans are excluded by felony laws from voting in the US Establishment’s 2-party electoral farce [11-13]. Free speech is vital for social advance but  a new democratic socialist Cuba would need to protect democracy by promotion of vigorous scientific and other expert, scholarly opinion, and mechanisms to stop Big Money corporate  subversion that has turned Western Democracies into Lobbyocracies and Corporatocracies, and by way of example, turned the British parliamentary Labour Party into neoliberal, Blair-ite New Labour.

3. Cuban true democracy versus US plutocracy.

As amply demonstrated by the recent US Presidential Race, the US is dominated by the rich One Percenters that are variously described as the Establishment, the Deep State or the Oligarchy. The US Establishment  and its captive Mainstream media overwhelmingly backed serial war criminal  and neoliberal Hillary Clinton in the recent US presidential election.   Clinton’s opponent, neoliberal billionaire Donald Trump,  portrayed himself as an opponent of the Establishment and defender of “ordinary Americans”.   However the fewer  than 50% of “ordinary American” voters  who voted for Trump will eventually realize that they have voted for a  massive, circa  $1 trillion per year tax cut for the rich, a hypothetical economic improvement driven by increased but pointless military expenditure, a free hand for terracidal fossil fuel corporations, terracidal climate change inaction, health insurance uncertainties with an adumbrated abolition of Obamacare, and, of course, racism, bigotry, misogyny and the winding back of hard-won rights of women and minorities. The Establishment  won with  Trump just as it would have won with Clinton. “Ordinary Americans” would have done vastly better with the pro-environment, free college education and universal health care provided by the socialist policies of Bernie Sanders (eliminated with the help of the Democrat Establishment) or by  the socialist program of the Mainstream media-ignored Dr Jill Stein (American Green Party) who gained a mere 1% of the vote [14].

Communist Cuba is ruled by the Communist Party for the benefit of all Cubans whereas the US is ruled by and for the One Percenter Establishment. In the US Democracy has become a Plutocracy, Kleptocracy, Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy, Corporatocracy and Dollarocracy in which Big Money buys people, politicians, parties policies, public perception of reality, political power and hence more private profit for the plutocrats. “Manufacturing consent” by One Percenter-owned Mainstream media ensures that of those Americans who are not excluded from voting and who actually bother to vote, nearly all will vote for the Establishment’s  Republican or Democrat candidates [14].

Indeed one must consider what we mean by “democracy”.  In its most profound sense, “democracy” or “rule by the people” surely means acceding to the most fundamental wishes of the people e.g.  a long,  healthy and fulfilling life  and survival of one’s children, goals that are achieved by peace, good governance, equity, good health care, 100% literacy and good education.  In this sense, altruistic socialism under Fidel Castro provided “true democracy” for the Cuban people by delivering on these fundamental wishes of ordinary people [15].

4. US imperialism  involves mass infanticide  but US-impoverished socialist Cuba has remarkably achieved the same low infant mortality as the wealthy US.

It is instructive to consider  “under-5 infant  mortality” in units of “under-5 year old infants per 1,000 births” (2015) [16]  and “per capita GDP” in US dollars ($; UN, 2015) [17] (a) for Cuba and the US,  (b) for Caribbean  countries invaded by the US  in living memory  (Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, and Panama), (c) for Caribbean countries subject to violent, US-backed civil conflict in living memory (Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) and (d) for other countries invaded by the US in living memory.

(a) Cuba (7 under-5 year old infants per 1,000 births; $7,274 per capita GDP; unsuccessfully invaded by the US in 1961), US (7; $54,306). By successfully resisting US invasion and US embargo and by good governance, good education and good health care,  US-impoverished Cuba has achieved the same low infant mortality as the wealthy US.

(b) Caribbean  countries invaded by the US  in living memory – Dominican Republic (28; $6,147; invaded by the US in 1965) ,Grenada (13; $8,313; invaded by the US in 1983); Haiti (77; $813; invaded by the US in 2004);  Panama (20; $12,712; invaded by the US in 1989).

(c) Caribbean countries subject to violent, US-backed civil conflict in living memory – Colombia (25; $7,904; US-backed civil war, 1964-2016), El Salvador (20; $4,120; US-backed civil war, 1972-1992), Guatemala (32; $3,673; US-backed civil war, 1954-1999), Honduras (40; $2,449; US-backed civil war, US-backed military rule from the 1920s to the 1980s; US-subverted “democracy” that violently subverted its neighbours for the US,  1982-2009; 2009, US-backed coup), and Nicaragua ( 24; $1,963; US-backed civil war, 1979-1992).

(d) Other countries variously invaded by US forces since 1950 – Afghanistan (93; $668; US-backed coup in 1978 leading to war with US-backed jihadis versus Russian invaders and their allies, 1979- 1989; US occupation, 2001-present); Cambodia (30; $1,095; US war, 1965-1975, that precipitated the Cambodian Genocide, 1976-1979),  Iran (16; $6,391; US-backed coup and installation of pro-US Shah, 1953-1979; failed US military raid, 1979; US-backed Iraq-Iran War, 1980-1988; deadly US and thence UN sanctions against zero-nuclear-weapons Iran  on behalf of 400-nuclear-weapons Apartheid Israel, 1979-2016 ), Iraq (36; $6,391; US-backed Iraq-Iran War, 1980-1988; US-led Gulf War, 1990-1991; US-led UN Sanctions, 1990-2003; US Alliance invasion, 2003-2011; US Alliance involved in Iraq civil war, 2014-present); Laos (54; $1,756; US subversion and war, 1958-1975, with saturation bombing by the US, 1964-1975), Libya (27; $6,602; France-UK-US (FUKUS) destruction of Libya, formerly the most prosperous African country, 2011- present), North Korea (26; $696; US Alliance Korean War 1950-1953 with 28% of the population killed; continuing threat and sanctions); Pakistan (83; $1,358; US bombing, 2001-present including drone attacks, 2004-present; US invasion to allegedly kill Osama bin Laden, 2011), Philippines (29; $2,871; US special forces  making war in Mindanao, 2012-present despite current Philippine Government opposition), Syria (19; $1,418; various key US Alliance support for Syrian rebels including  ISIS, 2011- present), Vietnam (23, $2,015; US Vietnam War, 1955-1975), Yemen (70; $1,821; US involved with Saudi-led Alliance war in Yemen, 2010- present). One notes that US-backed Apartheid Israel (4; $38,261) violently rules over Occupied Palestine (23; $2,811).

It should be noted that (i) the US has  bases in about 75 countries; (ii) the US actively subverts all countries; (iii), the US has been involved in numerous civil wars in Africa, Latin America and Asia;  (iv), the joint US-Australia Pine Gap electronic spying facility in Central Australia targets US drone strikes in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan; (v)  40 million Asians have died from violence or imposed deprivation in post-1950 US Asian wars; (vi) about 32 million Muslims have died from violence (5 million) or from imposed deprivation (27 million) in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance  in the US War on Muslims (aka the US War on Terror) since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity in 2001 [9, 18-22].

5. Zero annual avoidable deaths in Cuba, China, Japan and Western countries.

For a country in a given period, avoidable mortality (avoidable death, excess mortality, excess death, deaths that should not have happened) is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics [2]. The UN Population Division provides detailed demographic data for essentially every country in the world since 1950 i.e. data on  population, death rate, birth rate, population breakdown, under-5 infant mortality rate [16]. For “good outcome”, low avoidable mortality,  high birth rate Developing countries, the death rate is about 4 deaths per 1000 population per year and accordingly for high birth rate Developing countries “avoidable death rate” (in “deaths per 1000 population per year”)  = actual death rate – 4 .Using data from the  UN Population Division it has been possible to calculate 1950-2005 “avoidable deaths” (avoidable mortality, excess deaths, excess mortality, deaths that did not have to happen)  for every country in the World. The 1950-2005 avoidable mortality totals [and independently estimated 1950-2005 under-5 infant mortality data in square brackets] are 1,303 million [878 million] (the World); 1,248 million [853 million] (the non-European World]; 55 million [25 million] (the European World); and 0.6 billion  [0.4 billion] (the Muslim World) – a Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust, a Third World Holocaust and a Muslim Holocaust that is 100 times greater than the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) or the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengali Holocaust, the man-made 1943-1945 Bengal Famine in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death in Bengal and the adjoining provinces of Assam, Orissa and Bihar [23, 24]. On this estimation basis, “annual avoidable death” as a percentage of population is approximately  0%   in socialist Cuba, pluralist  China, Japan and in Western countries, but is 0.4% in South Asia, 0.6% for Indigenous Australians, and 1.0% for non-Arab Africa [2].

6. Cuban-style altruistic governance and a global annual wealth tax could abolish the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust.

Castro’s Cuba provides an excellent model of rational, humane and altruistic governance and for how humanity can stop the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust in which 17 million people die avoidably each year from deprivation in the Third World (minus China) [2].  Thus the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust is happening on Spaceship Earth with the flight deck under the control of the 10% richest who have about 90% of the wealth of the World and who in turn are controlled by One Percenters who own about 50% of the wealth of the World. An annual global wealth tax of about 5% would yield about US$20 trillion annually and enable raising all countries to annual per capita incomes equivalent to the circa $7,000 per person per year of China and Cuba, relatively poor countries for which annual avoidable mortality is zero (0) due to competent and  altruistic governance [25].  This is a feasible option for stopping the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust. Indeed a progressive annual wealth tax ranging up to 10% for the richest has been proposed for democracy and economic sustainability  reasons by French economist Professor Thomas Piketty in his important book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”  [26, 27].  France has an annual wealth tax of up to 1.5% and for 1,400 years Islam has had an annual wealth tax (zakat) of 2.5% as one of its 5 Pillars of Wisdom  [28].

7. Fidel Castro’s legacy of eco-socialism.

Fidel Castro has provided a final legacy of eco-socialism for a world acutely threatened by man-made global warming, a worsening  climate emergency and a worsening climate genocide.   Fidel Castro’s Cuba has demonstrated that competent and  altruistic  governance in a socialist society can provide a decent  life for all with good   health care, 100% literacy, a Western life expectancy, and very low  infant mortality in a country with a per capita GDP of only about $7,000,  or about 8 times less than that of the US. However economies need to be not only equitable and energy efficient but also sustainable in relation to our acutely threatened Biosphere.  Environmental sustainability  is the great existential  challenge to Humanity today, and must be met by an environmentally sound eco-socialism.  Fidel Castro on the very survival of human society threatened by First World-imposed global warming (Copenhagen, 2009): “The youth is more interested than anyone else in the future. Until very recently, the discussion revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society will survive. These are not dramatic phrases. We must get used to the true facts. Hope is the last thing human beings can relinquish. With truthful arguments, men and women of all ages, especially young people, have waged an exemplary battle at the Summit and taught the world a great lesson” [29].

8. Socialist Cuba’s high literacy, high female literacy and truth-telling.

A massive achievement of the 1959 Cuban revolution was to rapidly increase literacy. The Cuban  Literacy Campaign got into high gear in 1961 and subsequently  had a big global impact  [30].  Literacy is now 99.7%  (i.e. almost 100% ) in socialist Cuba as compared to 60.7% in US-invaded and Western-occupied Haiti [31]. High  female literacy is crucial for good primary  health care and infant care, and this is reflected in the Western-style low infant mortality,  zero avoidable mortality and long life expectancy in relatively poor Cuba.  High literacy is vital for science-based rational risk management that is crucial for societal safety, and successively involves (a) accurate information, (b) science-based analysis , and (c) science-informed systemic change to minimize risk. Such risk management at both societal  and global levels is crucial for effective climate change action in a world in which catastrophic plus 2 degrees Centigrade temperature rise is now unavoidable [32, 33].

About 14% of Americans are functionally illiterate to the extent that  they are unable to perform everyday basic prose reading and prose writing [34, 35] and one supposes that a much higher percentage of Americans, perhaps  circa 50%, can’t read and write prose properly (e.g. 46% of Australians are functionally illiterate in that sense and 53% are functionally innumerate) [36].  This functional illiteracy has appalling consequences e.g. a recent poll found that 42% of Americans believed that  God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so, that a further 31% believed that man evolved but with God guiding  the process, and that only 19% believed in human evolution with God having no part in the process [37]. One suppose that it was such  functionally illiterate,  scientifically illiterate and impoverished “ordinary Americans” who voted in droves for an anti-science, climate change denying, neoliberal billionaire  Donald Trump. About 1.7 million “ordinary Americans” die preventably each year from all sorts of causes from smoking to suicide, but successive US Governments have committed to the fiscal perversion of a  long-term accrual cost of $6 trillion   for the US War on Terror, committing   trillions of dollars to killing millions of Muslims abroad rather than keeping millions of Americans alive at home [38, 39]. In his movie “Sicko” , Michael Moore dramatized this  depraved indifference  of the US Establishment  to the lives and deaths “ordinary Americans” when he took some seriously ill 9-11 first responder heroes to Cuba for free medical treatment that they could not access at home [40].

Concluding comments.

Fidel Castro (1926-2016) not only liberated Cuba from a vicious, US-backed dictator but also liberated the Cuban people from poverty, corruption, illiteracy, poor health, untimely infant death and untimely death in general. Fidel Castro’s Cuba has provided a good model for Third World development. Indeed Cuba’s example of good, altruistic governance shows how Humanity can end the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust in which 17 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year. Under extraordinary  pressure from relentless US state terrorism,  Cuba has been a one-party state but free speech is vital for scholarship, science and social advance.  A democratic eco-socialism must have free dissent but needs robust, science-based truth-telling and strong mechanisms to constrain corporate perversion of democracy.  Cuban-style high economic efficiency (excellent outcomes for a low per capita income country) coupled with mandatory environmental sustainability and equity, point toward an eco-socialism-based alternative to the neoliberal, corporate  greed that is existentially threatening Humanity and the Biosphere.

References.

[1]. “Fidel Castro”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2007, a book that includes  an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal  on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/  .

[3]. “United States embargo against Cuba”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba .

[4]. “638 ways to kill Castro”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro

[5]. “Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro .

[6]. William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”, 2000.

[7]. Philip Agree, “Inside the Company. CIA Diary”, 1975.

[8]. “List of countries by incarceration rate”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate .

[9]. “Palestinian Genocide” :  http://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[10]. “Incarceration in the United States”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States .

[11]. Michelle  Alexander, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, The New Press, 2010.

[12]. Michelle  Alexander, “The war on drugs and the New Jim Crow”, Race, Poverty, Environment, Vol. 17, No. 1 | Spring 2010: http://reimaginerpe.org/20years/alexander .

[13]. Gideon Polya, “Truth & Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) Can Overcome Huge Inequities Suffered By African Americans Under American Apartheid”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290914.htm .

[14]. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Consent”, Pantheon, New York, 2002.

[15]. Sam Jones, “Castro’s legacy and the envy of many nations: social care in Cuba”, Guardian, 28 November 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/27/castros-legacy-and-the-envy-of-many-nations-social-care-in-cuba .

[16]. UN Population Division, World Population Prospects, 2015 revision: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/DataQuery/ .

[17]. “List of per capita nominal GDP for countries and dependencies”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita .

[18]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

[19]. Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .

[20]. “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .

[21]. “Experts; US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/  .

[22]. Gideon Polya,“Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable  Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”,  Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm .

[23]. Gideon Polya (2008), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2008 edition that is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  ).

[24]. Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[25]. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm .

[26]. Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” ( Harvard University Press, 2014).

[27]. Gideon Polya, “Key Book Review: “Capital In The Twenty-First Century” By Thomas Piketty”, Countercurrents, 01 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya010714.htm .

[28]. “1% ON 1%: annual one percent tax on One Percenter wealth”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/1-on-1 .

[29]. Fidel Castro, “The truth of what happened at Copenhagen Summit “, Countercurrents, 21 December 2009: http://www.countercurrents.org/castro211209.htm .

[30]. “Cuban literacy campaign”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Literacy_Campaign .

[31]. “List of countries by literacy rate”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate .

[32]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[33]. “Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming .

[34]. “Functional illiteracy”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy

[35]. Robert Roy Britt, “14 percent of U.S. adults can’t read”, LiveScience, 10 January 2009: http://www.livescience.com/3211-14-percent-adults-read.html

[36]. Josh Fear, “Choice overload. Australians coping with financial decisions”. The Australia Institute, Discussion paper 99, section 3.1 : http://www.tai.org.au/documents/dp_fulltext/DP99.pdf  .

[37]. Yasmine Hafiz, “Over 40% of Americans believe in creationism, survey says”,  Huffington Post, 6 March 2014: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/creationism-america-survey_n_5434107 .

[38]. Gideon Polya , “West Ignores 11 Million Muslim War Deaths & 23 Million Preventable American Deaths Since US Government’s False-flag 9-11 Atrocity”, Countercurrents, 9 September, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090915.htm .

[39]. Gideon Polya, “American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And $40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans”,  27 August, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270813.htm

[40]. Michael Moore, “Sicko”, a movie.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine  ;  Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home  ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ) . When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

1 December 2016

By Andre Vltchek

Common wisdom says that after Donald Trump got elected in the United States, Vietnam should be in panic.

True, there could be some ‘objective’ reasons for alarm, if one is truly obsessed with the ‘free’ trade agreements.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership may soon go to the dogs and at least onesizeable part of the Vietnamese leadership was counting on it, hoping that it would boost the economy, particularly its garment and agricultural sectors.

However, Vietnam is and always was tough, and on top of it, there are many signs indicating that the public and many government and Party heads areactually demanding a more ‘hardline’ Communist path, not just more business activities.

Earlier this year, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, was re-elected, while Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung was pushed from power. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported:

“Mr Dung was the party’s strongest voice in denouncing Beijing and was credited with Vietnam’s smooth accession to a US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

In brief: he was one of the main local advocates of the pro-Western foreign and economic policy, which was setting Vietnam on a dangerous crash course with China. And he is gone…

After the recent election results in the United States were announced, Vietnam is set to move much closer towards both China and Russia. President-elect Donald Trump’s ‘exceptionalist’ and often anti-Asian rhetoric is already setting off alarm bells all over the region: from Hanoi to Jakarta, and naturally from Manila to Beijing.

*

Donald Trump is now getting ready to murder the ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership’(the 12-nation trade pact). Vietnam, which during the previous years developed (pragmatically) a very close relationship with the Obama administration, is watching nervously. Before the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party earlier this year (and particularly since a new Constitution was adopted in 2013), Vietnam introduced and passed around 100 new laws, some described rightly or wrongly by Western analysts as ‘pro-market economic reforms’.

Undeniably, some in the Vietnamese leadership believed that their country would be one of the main beneficiaries of the TPP.

There was even some muted grumbling about the ‘growing strategic relationship’ between Vietnam and the United States.

To impress the West, particularly the United States, Hanoi kept ‘improving the business climate’, ‘easing its trade regulationsand yielding to various demands from Western and Asian businesses and corporations.

Most alarmingly, Hanoi’s confrontational stand towards China was changing from rhetorical to ‘tangible’, after Vietnambegan expanding its runway – andaccording to Reuters and other Western sources – after it began deploying several rocket launchers in or near the disputed area in the South China Sea.

*

To say that ‘Vietnam changed its basic positions opportunistically and abruptly’ would be wrong. Even before the US elections, Vietnam began ‘diversifying’ its foreign policy.

Now Hanoi is hoping for the deal that is being proposed by China: a 16-nation agreement called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which would include Vietnam and the rest of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India.

Relations between Hanoi and Beijing have been rapidly improving. It is becoming clear that Vietnam may be following the example of the Philippines, backing offpermanently from the confrontational course with the most populous nation on earth. Significantly, the top Vietnamese leadership recently hosted the outspoken anti-imperialist President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. To quote Gary Sands from the Foreign Policy Blogs:

“…While the previous administration in Hanoi had angered Beijing by seeking legal advice from Manila in order to potentially file their own claim at The Hague, the new leadership under Quang appears to be backing off confrontation with Beijing, along with Manila. Any jointly-coordinated legal or military effort between Hanoi and Manila appears now to be out of the question for fear of provoking the dragon next door, while we await the outcome of hopefully peaceful bilateral negotiations.”

The ideological stand of the Vietnamese leadership became clear following the death of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro Ruz. The country announced a day of mourning and Vietnam’s government and Party officials delivered powerful emotional revolutionary and internationalist speeches.

*

One major problem is that the Western perspective has managed to kidnap almost entirely the narrative on the country – the way all major or minor developments in Vietnam are being perceived and interpreted. This does not necessarily apply to the Vietnamese people, although many of them are actually also consuming Western propaganda at an excessive rate. However, it definitely applies to how the rest of the world understands (or misunderstands) Vietnam.

The slowing down of Doi Moi pro-market reforms is hardly addressed by Western mass media. As they hardly address any social changes inneighboring China. In Europe and the US it is generally perceived that both countries are determinately and happily embracing the market economy concepts.

The reality couldn’t be any farther from that. In China and in Vietnam (although still more in China), the majority of the population has been disappointed, even disgusted, by capitalist practices. People are demanding the re-introduction of essential socialist principles. In China, under the leadership of President Xi, the government is yielding to the people’s demands. It appears that Vietnam is paying close attention to its giant neighbor in the North, and is also willing to reconsider its hard-core pro-market stands.

The people of Vietnam may be hopeful, but they are not necessarily content, in the cities and in the countryside. Life is now better than two decades ago, but expectations are also much higher. ‘Socialism Vietnam-style’ would most likely be welcomed by the majority, and could be coming soon!

*

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

4 December 2016

By Nile Bowie

South Korea’s Park Geun-hye is at the center of a political firestorm and under attack on multiple fronts over a devastating corruption scandal. The country’s first female president faces impeachment and mass street protests calling for her arrest.

The bizarre scandal engulfing Park’s government is rooted in allegations that her longtime personal friend and confidant, Choi Soon-sil, exerted an inordinate amount of influence over government policies, edited the president’s speeches and even influenced government appointments.

Choi, a civilian with no security clearance, was found to illegally possess confidential government documents. Park is also accused of personally lobbying corporations like Samsung and Hyundai to make massive financial contributions to charitable organisations controlled by Choi.

To add to the salaciousness, Korean media reports claim Choi’s father was a spiritual mentor to Park after the death of her parents because of his alleged ability to channel the spirit of her assassinated mother and induce trance-like experiences in the future president.

Park’s approval ratings have plunged to 5 percent and she has agreed to resign in an effort to head off a pending impeachment vote. However, she admitted no legal wrongdoing and called for the country’s ruling assembly to decide the terms of her resignation.

There is speculation that she is attempting to bide her time considering that any proceeding in the assembly would take many months. Even if lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to end Park’s rule, the country’s Constitutional Court judges could block the measure, allowing her to see out her term, due to end at the end of next year.

Since coming to power four years ago, Park has governed high-handedly with a secretive style of leadership that has stoked public curiosity in her closely guarded personal life. She campaigned on reducing income inequality and expanding welfare but emerged adrift as a bland center-right defender of the status quo.

Park is heir to a fallen political dynasty, the daughter of Park Chung-Hee, a contentious military dictator strongly associated with the rapid growth and authoritarian politics of his eighteen-year rule. Both her parents were killed in political assassinations during her youth and she has remained an unmarried and solitary figure throughout her life.

Relations with North Korea have reached their nadir under her hawkish foreign policy, symbolized by the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the suspension of all inter-Korean cooperation and channels for emergency communication between north and south.

She has brought lawsuits for defamation against journalists and engineered the dissolution of the far-left United Progressive Party, ousting elected parliamentarians on the pretext that the party was intent on realizing North Korean-style socialism, when in actuality they held critical views of US military presence in their country and advocated détente with Pyongyang.

Park’s primary foreign policy overture was an extended charm offensive to the Chinese leadership in an attempt to persuade President Xi Jinping to cooperate more fully with Seoul on pressuring North Korea over its nuclear program.

China responded by initially strengthening ties with South Korea, but relations have soured considerably after Seoul agreed to deploy the sophisticated American missile defense system known as Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) on its territory.

Despite mass public opposition inside South Korea against the THAAD deployment, Seoul’s conservative establishment says the system will counter Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. China, wary of American military presence near its borders, believes it is the true target of the missile defense system and says the move would impede its security interests.

From mishandling the government’s response to a capsized ferry that killed dozens to a row about whitewashing her father’s legacy in school textbooks, Park’s advocacy of THAAD and her pro-American security orientation has made her deeply unpopular at home while hindering trust and cooperation with China, her country’s biggest trading partner.

The governing party lost its parliamentary majority during Park’s tenure and now faces two emboldened opposition parties with populist programs.

However the political crisis plays out, it’s clear that the conservative wing of the political establishment faces a daunting challenge: Park could very well become the first elected president to be removed from office to face trial.

The opposition needs just 28 of the 128 lawmakers from the ruling party to secure her impeachment and this figure may be within reach before the closing of the current the parliamentary session on 9 December. There is already discussion of Park’s successor. Ban Ki-moon, the outgoing UN Secretary General, is considered a front-runner for the job.

There is much speculation that Ban, whose term expires in January 2017, will run though he has yet to confirm or deny his intentions. This would be a formidable challenge for the opposition due to Ban’s stature and prestige as a global diplomatic figure, widely viewed among Koreans as having experience and integrity. It’s unclear whether Ban would side with Park’s party or the opposition should he run.

Park was one of the first world leaders to phone President-elect Donald Trump, whose remarks have shaken Korean confidence in the American leadership. Where US-Korea relations go from here is an open question. It should be remembered that a small but growing segment of Park’s party favors the development of nuclear weapons to deter North Korea.

Given the uncertain political climate brought on by populist victories in the West, Korean voters could opt for a ‘safe’ steady-handed candidate, though it is difficult to imagine a potential Ban Ki-moon presidency as anything other than the caretaking of a stale political order. Whatever the outcome, the impeachment of Park Geun-hye is a real possibility in the days ahead.

Nile Bowie is a Singapore-based political commentator and columnist for the Malaysian Reserve newspaper. His articles have appeared in numerous international media outlets, including Russia Today (RT) and Al Jazeera, and newspapers such as the International New York Times, the Global Times and the New Straits Times. He is a JUST member.

5 December 2016

By Robert J Barsocchini

Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the most cited scholars in history.  His work continues to be prominently taught in classes at top US universities like Yale.  He teaches classes on US government at MIT, and has written some 100 books on political and social science topics.  He has been voted in multiple polls as the world’s most important public intellectual.

So why do Western corporate and government media outlets like the New York Times (whose board members have often also been on the boards of weapons manufacturers) almost entirely avoid quoting or citing him?

Perhaps because they do not want to call much attention to his work, which includes meticulously documenting and exposing that what outlets like the Times produce is largely fake news – a new buzz-word for propaganda.

The New York Times, Chomsky has noted, is a particularly odious offender.  He refers to the output of that publication, which claims to offer “all the news that’s fit to print”, as “pure propaganda”, and documents how and why this is the case.

Thus, media outlets that Western elites refer to as “independent” really are not independent.  They are major corporations with inherent conflicts of interest that both determine their output and allow them to peddle it widely.

The most-watched news channel in the US, for example, NBC, has been owned by one of the world’s biggest nuclear weapons manufacturers, and does not like to publicize this or its many other conflicts of interest, even though they might be of some interest to viewers.

But one might argue that we could still call corporate media businesses independent since at first glance they appear to at least be independent of government.  We would have to admit this would be a sneaky move because it would still attempt to downplay the corporate conflicts of interest, but let’s see if it is even accurate to say corporate media are independent of government.

The owners of these corporations are some of the wealthiest people in the US (and world), and as major studies out of US Ivy League universities have amply documented, US government policy is determined not by the US population, but by people in the top tiers of the income scale.  (Chomsky points out the US is “not a democracy, and was not intended to be.”)  So to claim that major corporations are independent of government is also misleading, since major corporations, to a very large extent, are the US government.

Not only do their owners exert major influence over government policy, but people from the highest points in the media corporations also continually cycle between the corporations and influential positions within the government.

Further, as has been amply documented by many journalists including Carl Bernstein, this corporate government clandestinely collaborates with top media corporations to further regulate their output.  Bernstein quotes William B. Bader, a former CIA intelligence officer, who divulges that “[y]ou don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level.”

Thus, it seems a bit of a stretch to call the major US media corporations “independent” in any sense of the word.

We can also ask whether Western elites are really opposed, in principal, to media outlets being directly financed by governments, or if they are simply opposed to government-financed media outlets that disprove claims published in Western media (such as, for example, “the US is a democracy”).

US officials and elites regularly condemn and spurn government-financed media outlets like RT (Russia Today).  But at the same time, they are perfectly content to promote media outlets funded by the US and other western governments (let alone the corporate “independent” media discussed above), and take no issue with outlets funded by favored non-Western governments, like the Saudi dictatorship, lead by strongman Salman bin Abdulaziz, who enjoys beheading civilians and then crucifying them with their heads in plastic bags stapled to their bodies.

So it also seems dubious to claim that Western elites are opposed in principal to government-funded media outlets.

It seems what they really have a problem with is people getting all sides of the story.  Indeed, when we read news stories from Western outlets and then read coverage of the same events from non-Western outlets (see here), it is readily apparent that the only way to figure out what really happened is to get all sides directly from all sides, not all sides filtered through one side – the West.

This also seems to be why, in court, both a prosecution and a defense present their sides to the jury: so the jury can make up its mind about what really happened.  If the jury only heard the prosecution’s side, it would likely get a somewhat distorted view that favored, intentionally or not, the prosecution.  Same for defense.

But Western elites are currently suggesting that we should only listen to the prosecution – media from the propaganda system discussed above, with all of its conflicts of interest, propaganda, control and censorship, and blatant fake news production.

Rationally speaking, it would seem to make more sense, and be more fair, to try to get all sides – the idea behind the jury-trial system.  And it seems a particularly lame, crude, and desperate move for one of the sides, in this case the West, to entreat the public to only listen to its side of events.

True, many governments, including the US, continually do this.  But most of them are weak and under serious attack by internal or external forces (often US or US-financed).  That the US, even as the most powerful empire in the history of the world, continues to engage in this practice seems to reveal a level of personal insecurity, fear, or cowardice in the US elite character, something that may be traced to the origins of the brutal oligarchic state in settler-colonial genocide and mass enslavement.

Robert J. Barsocchini is an independent researcher and reporter who focuses on global force dynamics and has served as a cross-cultural intermediary for the film and Television industry. His work has been cited, published, or followed by numerous professors, economists, lawyers, military and intelligence veterans, and journalists. Updates on Twitter.

4 December 2016

By Stephen Hawking

As a theoretical physicist based in Cambridge, I have lived my life in an extraordinarily privileged bubble. Cambridge is an unusual town, centered around one of the world’s great universities. Within that town, the scientific community which I became part of in my twenties is even more rarefied. And within that scientific community, the small group of international theoretical physicists with whom I have spent my working life might sometimes be tempted to regard themselves as the pinnacle. Add to this, the celebrity that has come with my books, and the isolation imposed by my illness, I feel as though my ivory tower is getting taller.

So the recent apparent rejection of the elite in both America and Britain is surely aimed at me, as much as anyone. Whatever we might think about the decision by the British electorate to reject membership of the European Union, and by the American public to embrace Donald Trump as their next President, there is no doubt in the minds of commentators that this was a cry of anger by people who felt that they had been abandoned by their leaders. It was, everyone seems to agree, the moment that the forgotten spoke, finding their voice to reject the advice and guidance of experts and the elite everywhere.

I am no exception to this rule. I warned before the Brexit vote that it would damage scientific research in Britain, that a vote to leave would be a step backward, and the electorate, or at least a sufficiently significant proportion of it, took no more notice of me than any of the other political leaders, trade unionists, artists, scientists, businessmen and celebrities who all gave the same unheeded advice to the rest of the country.

What matters now however, far more than the choices made by these two electorates, is how the elites react. Should we, in turn, reject these votes as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.

The concerns underlying these votes about the economic consequences of globalisation and accelerating technological change are absolutely understandable. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, the rise of AI is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.

This in turn will accelerate the already widening economic inequality around the world. The internet and the platforms which it makes possible allow very small groups of individuals to make enormous profits while employing very few people. This is inevitable, it is progress, but it is also socially destructive.

We need to put this alongside the financial crash, which brought home to people that a very few individuals working in the financial sector can accrue huge rewards and that the rest of us underwrite that success and pick up the bill when their greed leads us astray. So taken together we are living in a world of widening, not diminishing, financial inequality, in which many people can see not just their standard of living, but their ability to earn a living at all, disappearing. It is no wonder then that they are searching for a new deal, which Trump and Brexit might have appeared to represent.

It is also the case that another unintended consequence of the global spread of the internet and social media is that the stark nature of these inequalities are far more apparent than they have been in the past. For me, the ability to use technology to communicate has been a liberating and positive experience. Without it, I would not have been able to continue working these many years past. But it also means that the lives of the richest people in the most prosperous parts of the world are agonisingly visible to anyone, however poor and who has access to a phone.  And since there are now more people with a telephone than access to clean water in Sub-Saharan Africa, this will shortly mean nearly everyone on our increasingly crowded planet will not be able to escape the inequality.

The consequences of this are plain to see; the rural poor flock to cities, to shanty towns, driven by hope. And then often, finding that the Instagram nirvana is not available there, they seek it overseas, joining the ever greater numbers of economic migrants in search of a better life. These migrants in turn place new demands on the infrastructures and economies of the countries in which they arrive, undermining tolerance and further fuelling political populism.

For me, the really concerning aspect of this, is that now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges. Climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans. Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it. Perhaps in a few hundred years, we will have established human colonies amidst the stars, but right now we only have one planet, and we need to work together to protect it.

To do that, we need to break down not build up barriers within and between nations. If we are to stand a chance of doing that, the world’s leaders need to acknowledge that they have failed and are failing the many. With resources increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, we are going to have to learn to share far more than at present. With not only jobs but entire industries disappearing, we must help people to re-train for a new world and support them financially while they do so. If communities and economies cannot cope with current levels of migration, we must do more to encourage global development, as that is the only way that the migratory millions will be persuaded to seek their future at home.

We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species, but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past month. To learn above all a measure of humility.

Stephen  Hawking is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge

First published in UNLIMITED

4 December 2016

By Katherine Southwick

Interethnic divisions in a young democracy cannot be downplayed or wished away, and it’s time Myanmar’s government and the international community acknowledge strong evidence that genocide is being perpetrated against the Rohingya and act to end it, Katherine Southwick writes.

Violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State escalated after a 9 October attack on border guard posts, leaving nine officers dead. Humanitarian assistance and media access to the area have been cut off for weeks while the Myanmar authorities conduct a counterinsurgency operation against allegedly Rohingya assailants. Responsibility for the initial attack remains unclear, however. More than a hundred people are thought to have died already, with 30,000 internally displaced adding to the 160,000 people who have been subsisting in squalid displacement camps since previous outbreaks of violence in 2012 and 2013. Human Rights Watch has released satellite imagery showing that over 1,200 buildings in Rohingya villages have been razed in the past month. Government soldiers have reportedly gang-raped Rohingya women and girls.

Bangladesh, which for 30 years has permitted more than 230,000 registered and unregistered Rohingya refugees to shelter in its territory, has been turning people back who seek refuge across the border. Thousands have already crossed and continue to gather at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

These events mark a dramatic deterioration in what has long been a desperate situation for a minority that many have identified as among the most persecuted in the world. Most of them are stateless, with the government designating them as “Bengalis” or “illegal immigrants,” despite many having had citizenship in the past and having lived in the region for generations. They have been subjected to forced labour and confined to displacement camps where they do not receive adequate food and medical care, leaving pregnant women and children particularly at risk of agonising illness and death.

Rohingya are subject to harsh restrictions on marriage, family size and movement. Their religious buildings have been destroyed, and those who flee on rickety boats to other countries such as Malaysia or Thailand have, in the past, been turned back to the open seas to die or suffer at the hands of traffickers or languish in indefinite detention.

A question that haunts Myanmar’s government, and the international community, is whether what is happening to the Rohingya constitutes genocide. By now a credible claim can be raised that the internationally recognised crime of genocide is taking place in Myanmar. Accordingly, based on international legal obligations, the Myanmar government and other nation states should be taking all necessary actions to stop and avert the gravest kind of humanitarian catastrophe.

Under Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which Myanmar has ratified, “genocide” is defined as “…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The Yugoslav tribunal has elaborated further on Article II (c) that deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about a group’s destruction can include “subjecting the group to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and denial of the right to medical services. Also included is the creation of circumstances that would lead to a slow death, such as lack of proper housing, clothing, and hygiene or excessive work or physical exertion.”

There is little doubt that for years the Rohingya population has suffered the acts listed in Article II (a) – (d) of the Genocide Convention.

On the intent requirement of the crime – that the acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic or religious group – courts have taken a highly contextualised, case-by-case approach, to determining whether intent can be inferred from factual circumstances. Such an inference must be “the only reasonable one available on the evidence.” Additionally, as the Rwandan tribunal has stated: “The offender is culpable because he knew or should have known that the act committed would destroy, in whole or in part, a group.”

This case-by-case approach to intent, along with the high burden of proof requiring the evidence to be “fully conclusive,” renders genocide determinations unavoidably contestable. Other analyses could suggest that the overall intent of perpetrators in Myanmar is better understood as “ethnic cleansing,” which reflects the idea that the actual intent is to forcibly transfer or expel the Rohingya rather than physically destroy them.

In the 2015 case of Croatia v. Serbia, which also included evidence of killings, sexual violence, forced labour, and displacement, the International Court of Justice did not find genocidal intent on the part of the Serbs against the Croats in the context of the Yugoslav war. Key considerations were that the conflict was seen as territorial and the Serbs had organised transportation for Croats to evacuate the territories that Serb forces had occupied.

The difference in the Rohingya case is that there is no clear escape from the abject misery and high risk of death or extreme abuse at the hands of traffickers or by other countries’ immigration authorities. There are no systematic measures to officially deport the population, either through providing transportation or agreeing to formal arrangements with receiving countries. Moreover, Rohingya are deterred from departing through restrictions on movement and punishments for leaving, such as by the removal from household lists, the extortion of family members left behind and imprisonment for “illegal” re-entry.

Hundreds, possibly thousands of babies born in squalid camps have suffered preventable deaths due to lack of food and medical care. The overall conditions are such that those persons imposing them over a prolonged period either know or ought to know, that the eventual outcome will be the physical destruction of the group, in whole or in part.

The complexity of proving genocide is ill-matched to the urgency of preventing and responding to genocidal situations when they arise. We could be waiting years for an international tribunal or a panel of experts to conclude authoritatively that genocide is or is not taking place. This scenario would come as too little too late for the many victims and their families, not to mention the domestic political fallout and economic disaster which would ensue after the fact. At the same time, the moral and political costs – the enduring stigma and potential criminal liability – of not acting to stop genocide are severe.

International law and institutions extricate us from this quandary through their emphasis on genocide prevention as an obligation that is at least as equally strong as protection. The 1948 Convention obligates states to prevent and punish genocide. The widely affirmed Responsibility to Protect doctrine requires states to prevent and protect victims from war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the absence of a meaningful government response.

We can now draw on ample scholarship and case law to identify situations that look very much like genocide and compel robust responses to live up to these obligations to prevent and protect. In 2015, the London-based International State Crime Initiative released a report based on a social scientific study and concluded that, “genocide is taking place in Myanmar” and warning of “the serious and present danger of the annihilation of the country’s Rohingya population.” Others have made a legal case for genocide, or the high risk of genocide, such as scholars Zarni and Cowley, Yale Law School’s human rights clinic, and former deputy prosecutor of the Yugoslav Tribunal, Sir Geoffrey Nice, among others.

Some might argue that the label for a crime should not matter, and in a sense they are right. These crimes too often occur along a spectrum that, without corrective action, can lead to the same calamitous result; massive loss of life and destruction.

We might think the responses would be the same, regardless of the words we choose to define the crime. However, too many international conferences and diplomatic meetings over the years have lamented the long list of persecutions and suffering this group has endured over decades, resulting in responses that are disproportionately inadequate to the gravity of the Rohingya’s plight. Tepid policies toward Myanmar and the Rohingya betray a deep-seated reluctance to label these crimes as genocide for fear of subverting the narrative so many in the world have waited for; an enlightened democratic transition. The notion of genocide in Myanmar risks turning the country back into an international pariah rather than an international darling.

But the current violence painfully illustrates that interethnic divisions in a young democracy cannot be downplayed or wished away. It is time for Myanmar, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the United Nations and others to face facts, to confront the prospect of genocide being perpetrated against the Rohingya. They must be open to judgment for their inaction, or more hopefully, take action and commit the resources needed to save lives throughout the region and preserve Myanmar’s future.

2 December 2016

By Nika Knight

As tensions grow in North Dakota, with multiple eviction orders facing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, U.S. military veterans on Friday began arriving at the Oceti Sakowin protest camp.

The 2,000 veterans, which include Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), plan to act as an unarmed militia and peaceful human shields to protect the Indigenous activists from police brutality.

“I signed up to serve my country and my people and I did that overseas,” Indigenous U.S. Navy veteran Brandee Paisano told the CBC. “I didn’t think I’d have to do it here, on this land, so here I am. This is what I need to be doing.”

The “deployment” is officially planned for December 4-7, but veterans who have arrived early have already taken their stand in front of the militarized police blockade stopping traffic into and out of the camp:

The “Veterans Stand for Standing Rock” action has garnered widespread support, with the National Nurses United (NNU) union sending $50,000 to fund their expenses and a popular fundraiser surpassing $800,000 by Friday afternoon.

“We salute the brave veterans who are standing up for the rights of the water protectors, and all of us who support this critical defense of the First Amendment right to assemble and protest without facing brutal and unwarranted attacks,” said NNU co-president Jean Ross.

Also on Friday, water protectors fulfilled a wishlist of supplies created by the Morton County Sheriff’s Department in Mandan, North Dakota, as an act of goodwill.

The generosity was striking, as officers from Morton County have subjected the Indigenous activists to extreme uses of force in recent days—including water cannons in subfreezing temperatures, mace, rubber bullets, and allegedly concussion grenades. One activist is still in danger of losing an arm after being struck with by what witnesses described as a concussion grenade thrown directly at her by police in riot gear.

“North Dakota taxpayers have already bankrolled the Morton County Sheriff Department with approximately ten million dollars for the suppression of peaceful water protectors. Despite this excessive financial support, Morton County officers are asking taxpayers to donate supplies,” said the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Indigenous Peoples Power Project in a joint statement.

“The Oceti Sakowin camp is a prayer camp, and a resilient, self-sufficient community,” the advocacy groups continued. “The camp is full of abundance—in spirit, in humanity, and in resources. Oceti Sakowin has enough to share. Generosity is an original teaching for the Lakota.”

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe also pushed back earlier this week against Dakota Access Pipeline company CEO Kelcy Warren, who has claimed that the pipeline would have been rerouted if only the tribe had spoken up sooner, with the release of a recording that showed the tribe had officially opposed the pipeline since at least 2014.

“[T]he recording provides audio from a Sept. 30, 2014, meeting in which Standing Rock officials expressed their opposition to the pipeline and raised concerns about its potential impact to sacred sites and their water supply—nearly two years before they raised similar objections in a federal lawsuit,” the Bismarck Tribune reports.

Meanwhile, since the Monday evacuation order from North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, officials have been threatening those bringing supplies into the camp with exorbitant fines.

The Indigenous activists (and journalists covering their fight) are already grappling with exaggerated criminal charges—which are often later thrown out in court.

The fines and charges are a tactic to dissuade and silence them, the water protectors say.

Yet the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies remain firm in their commitment to their fight for clean water and traditional territory. The New York Times‘ Timothy Egan wroteFriday:

[M]any of the natives at Standing Rock are not bitter, and see this stand in spiritual terms.

“In the face of this we pray,” Lyla June Johnston, a young Native leader, told me the day after the blizzards blew in. “In the face of this we love. In the face of this we forgive. Because the vast majority of water protectors know this is the greatest battle of all: to keep our hearts intact.”

As CNN‘s Sara Sidner reported: “The only thing that’s going to make protesters leave […] is if the pipeline is stopped.”

First published in CommonDreams.org

3 December 2016